Ten Forward Weekly 10/27/21

One of the new ships was originally going to be part of a larger bundle of ships that got split up

This bundle had an internal name that would probably not be considered polite

New ship T6 Nova

First thing Hector wanted to do with the T6 Nova was create a sense of direction like they try to apply to most STO ships. Instead of having a saucer and a hull he wanted to integrate everything to make it look more sturdy/directional

They did a lot of concept art sketches for the T6 nova, but couldn't/didn't want to steer too far from the general shape so they settled for something in between an arrowhead and a saucer. Got rid of the prongs, but left a dark space to give a feeling of prong being there

T6 Nova was modeled by Tobias Richter

"science cans" on the bottom of the hull are sensors/satellites the ship can deploy/return to scan planets as part of the Nova's mission of a planetary science ship(not actual gameplay function)

Hector tries to make nacelles like the Nova's look like wings

T6 Nova uses new Type 7A material

Guardian is about to get the 7A material

Going forward 7A will be default for T6 Fed ships coming out

T6 Nova console: Nucleogenic Igniter. +Starship shield regeneration and Starship control expertise. PBAoE Radiation DoT, Healing aura from enemies. Each foe within 10km gets radiation damage ever sec for 15 seconds. Allied within 2km of an affected foe gets hit points and shield regen. 2min recharge.

T6 Nova trait: Synthetic Good Fortune. Passive + 25 starship sector speed. On activation +5 starship control expertise and +.05% critical chance for 5 minutes(stacks up to 40 times when using pilot and control abilities)

Kael found out that spawning the mutant Hur'q from ViL on a map other then that one causes it to become an invisible, untargetable, monster

Console is not meant to be using the actual nucleogenic creatures from the show, just radiation. Its not a war crimes gun.

Eric Henry designed the new Saber class

EC Henry has done the Appalachia, Columbia, and the T6 DSC BoP, for STO, among others

Thomas thinks Eric has a cool style that he likes a lot, and likes that EC Henry thinks a lot about function, and adds a lot of Easter eggs on his ships that are inspired by real world ships and airplanes

Other new ship is a T6 Saber class

Some ships are built to have greebles and interior workings for the nacelles, and then put a transparent casing over them with an animated bit on them, which means vanity shields don't work on them because the bussard collector is a separate piece of geometry then the rest of the ship

T6 Nova's bussard collectors won't change, T6 Saber's will

T6 Saber is the Da Vinci class

Named after the Saber class from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series of stories. Could have been named the Yeager, but they already have a Yeager class in STO due to Discovery.

Saber class got remastered in this update also

Eric's lore for the T6 Saber was that is was an update from the Allied Ship Design Board done in collaboration with the Cardassians

People mention the horseshoe crab look, which Thomas thinks is a cool template for starships

No plans to do any sort of connection for the Star Trek Lit verse's Coda event, but a STO character was in the novels as a reference since the author is a fan of STO

Change from Yellow to Red for Mirror ships was simply an aesthetic thing, several artists on the team didn't like the yellow and persuaded the lead artist to go to red. If they are trying to recreate something from the IDW Mirror comics they will go with the yellow, but STO era mirror ships will use red.

T6 Saber has new experimental weapon. Gatling Emitter. Rapid non-stop damage after spin up. After 3 sec lock on kinetic damage X4 per sec to foe until no longer valid target. 8 second recharge.

T6 Saber Trait: energy Overdrive. +100% flight speed and turn rate for 10 seconds. 10%-50% all damage with energy weapons for 10 seconds for using beam skills like beam overload

Design for Saber was looking at Escorts. Defiant is all about canons, and Akira is all about torpedoes, so Saber is about beams

T6 Saber console: Troyius Protocol. +outgoing hull healing - weapon power cost.

Troyius Protocol. Haste, Beam damage and Unkillable, then hull+shield heal and stealth. For first 6 seconds +30% energy damage 125% haste with energy weapons, unkillable. For remaining 8 seconds weapons offline, stealthed, restores 3% of max hull and shields each sec. When activating a hull heal +2% crit chance for 10 sec. 2 min recharge

Console is a reference to the novels. Da Vinci hid a whole plant Troyius from the Borg, console takes inspiration from that

No new news for DilEx this week. But answer question about buying account unlock starship traits would not be a long term solution since its a 1 and done kind of buy, and they need something more repeatable then that

Both ships are available in a bundle, and separate. Bundle will come with 2 FSMs, and 2 experimental ship upgrades

Unlikely to get a new faction any time soon

Experimental weapons tend to not be one of the main damage types to prevent feeling like you have to use one over the other

New ships come out next week

Can't talk about why the Mirror Guardian was delayed other then it was a necessity

Ian Richards added a lot more variance to damage states as part of the new ship explosion update. As your hull gets lower ship lights will flicker, and will get little explosions/plasma leaks/smoke trails. Damage materials were rebuilt as part of this update as well

Experimental weapons were added to add more viability to escorts. Due to dual cannons, and heavy cannons, they had fewer weapon slots then cruisers,. Experimental weapons helped make them on to par with the beam meta at the time, and to give escorts a unique feature like sci ships and cruisers have

Kael will ask about getting Mirror Runabout from charity event into the game

No real plans for more shuttle content. Kael admits its one of those sneak eating its own tail things like PVP

Asked about revamping shuttles themselves. Answer was maybe. Internal logic Kael has heard is that its a really not great feeling to be in a smaller version of your ship with less cool stuff.

Kael was in a meeting about something we are going to like, but OFC can't talk about it

Cryptic is currently working on some stuff like bringing old episodes back into the game

Cryptic is doing some DSC ship stuff that Thomas thinks is pretty interesting/complex. Might do a 32nd century saucer ship ship like Prometheus, but will probably wait to see what DSC does. Problem is that its too obvious given how everything floats and how you could do it with pretty much any 32nd ship

Thomas tends to shy away from those sorts of things because they end up being a large undertaking for many different groups to get it to work. He wants to save that time for when its required by canon, and the more they do it the less special it is.

Thomas thinks the Protostar is cool as a small starship like Franklin/Book's Ship. Thinks it fits in with the era the show is set, and sees a bit of JJ in the nacelles/struts

Will take a lot of effort from a lot of people to get it right when its added into STO(for the same reason as saucer sep ships do)

Hector thinks the ship "transform" thing looks amazing, and wants to know how it works/what its good for. Agrees with the JJ inspiration with the nacelles.

Thomas liked the new Excelsior from Lower Decks, and that Gomez was the captain. Things its unlikely it would work with current Excelsior if they added it to STO because its much bigger

Will see about the California class hull split when the ship gets added to STO. Thomas was sort of expecting it, but thinks several other devs don't think it would make for a good console power. Would be another thing that would take a lot of effort due to needing to essentially make two full ship models to get it to work. Question how faithful CBS would expect them to be if they did it like if pipes needed to match etc. Thomas has put a lot of thought into it.

CBS tends to be more picky about Lower Decks ship designs due to translating from cartoon style to realistic style. Haven't really had problems with anything they did with Discovery ships because its already realistic/live action.

Thomas doesn't really like the Yaeger. They could make the art, but pitching the time needed for systems team etc to make it really do something to Al is "another ball of wax"